Chapter 24
1758, 1759

Wolfe

Captain John Knox, of the forty-third regiment, had spent the winter in garrison at Fort Cumberland, on the hill of Beauséjour.   For nearly two years he and his comrades had been exiles amid the wilds of Nova Scotia, and the monotonous inaction was becoming insupportable.   The great marsh of Tantemar on the one side, and that of Missaguash on the other, two vast flat tracts of glaring snow, bounded by dark hills of spruce and fir, were hateful to their sight.   Shooting, fishing, or skating were a dangerous relief; for the neighborhood was infested by "vermin," as they called the Acadians and their Micmac allies.   In January four soldiers and a ranger were waylaid not far from the fort, disabled by bullets, and then scalped alive.   They were found the next morning on the snow, contorted in the agonies of death, and frozen like marble statues.   St.   Patrick's Day brought more cheerful excitements.   The Irish officers of the garrison gave their comrades a feast, having laid in during the autumn a stock of frozen provisions, that the festival of their saint might be duly honored.   All was hilarity at Fort Cumberland, where it is recorded that punch to the value of twelve pounds sterling, with a corresponding supply of wine and beer, was consumed on this joyous occasion.  

About the middle of April a schooner came up the bay, bringing letters that filled men and officers with delight.   The regiment was ordered to hold itself ready to embark for Louisbourg and join an expedition to the St.   Lawrence, under command of Major-General Wolfe.   All that afternoon the soldiers were shouting and cheering in their barracks; and when they mustered for the evening roll-call, there was another burst of huzzas.   They waited in expectancy nearly three weeks, and then the transports which were to carry them arrived, bringing the provincials who had been hastily raised in New England to take their place.   These Knox describes as a mean-looking set of fellows, of all ages and sizes, and without any kind of discipline; adding that their officers are sober, modest men, who, though of confined ideas, talk very clearly and sensibly, and make a decent appearance in blue, faced with scarlet, though the privates have no uniform at all.  

At last the forty-third set sail, the cannon of the fort saluting them, and the soldiers cheering lustily, overjoyed to escape from their long imprisonment.   A gale soon began; the transports became separated; Knox's vessel sheltered herself for a time in Passamaquoddy Bay; then passed the Grand Menan, and steered southward and eastward along the coast of Nova Scotia.   A calm followed the gale; and they moved so slowly that Knox beguiled the time by fishing over the stern, and caught a halibut so large that he was forced to call for help to pull it in.   Then they steered northeastward, now lost in fogs, and now tossed mercilessly on those boisterous waves; till, on the twenty-fourth of May, they saw a rocky and surf-lashed shore, with a forest of masts rising to all appearance out of it.   It was the British fleet in the land-locked harbor of Louisbourg.  

On the left, as they sailed through the narrow passage, lay the town, scarred with shot and shell, the red cross floating over its battered ramparts; and around in a wide semicircle rose the bristling back of rugged hills, set thick with dismal evergreens.   They passed the great ships of the fleet, and anchored among the other transports towards the head of the harbor.   It was not yet free from ice; and the floating masses lay so thick in some parts that the reckless sailors, returning from leave on shore, jumped from one to another to regain their ships.   There was a review of troops, and Knox went to see it; but it was over before he reached the place, where he was presently told of a characteristic reply just made by Wolfe to some officers who had apologized for not having taught their men the new exercise.   "Poh, poh! new exercise new fiddlestick.   If they are otherwise well disciplined, and will fight, that's all I shall require of them.  "

Knox does not record his impressions of his new commander, which must have been disappointing.   He called him afterwards a British Achilles; but in person at least Wolfe bore no likeness to the son of Peleus, for never was the soul of a hero cased in a frame so incongruous.   His face, when seen in profile, was singular as that of the Great Condé.   The forehead and chin receded; the nose, slightly upturned, formed with the other features the point of an obtuse triangle; the mouth was by no means shaped to express resolution; and nothing but the clear, bright, and piercing eye bespoke the spirit within.   On his head he wore a black three-cornered hat; his red hair was tied in a queue behind; his narrow shoulders, slender body, and long, thin limbs were cased in a scarlet frock, with broad cuffs and ample skirts that reached the knee; while on his left arm he wore a band of crape in mourning for his father, of whose death he had heard a few days before.  

James Wolfe was in his thirty-third year.   His father was an officer of distinction, Major-General Edward Wolfe, and he himself, a delicate and sensitive child, but an impetuous and somewhat headstrong youth, had served the King since the age of fifteen.   From childhood he had dreamed of the army and the wars.   At sixteen he was in Flanders, adjutant of his regiment, discharging the duties of the post in a way that gained him early promotion and, along with a painstaking assiduity, showing a precocious faculty for commanding men.   He passed with credit through several campaigns, took part in the victory of Dettingen, and then went to Scotland to fight at Culloden.   Next we find him at Stirling, Perth, and Glasgow, always ardent and always diligent, constant in military duty, and giving his spare hours to mathematics and Latin.   He presently fell in love; and being disappointed, plunged into a variety of dissipations, contrary to his usual habits, which were far above the standard of that profligate time.  

At twenty-three he was a lieutenant-colonel, commanding his regiment in the then dirty and barbarous town of Inverness, amid a disaffected and turbulent population whom it was his duty to keep in order: a difficult task, which he accomplished so well as to gain the special commendation of the King, and even the goodwill of the Highlanders themselves.   He was five years among these northern hills, battling with ill-health, and restless under the intellectual barrenness of his surroundings.   He felt his position to be in no way salutary, and wrote to his mother: "The fear of becoming a mere ruffian and of imbibing the tyrannical principles of an absolute commander, or giving way insensibly to the temptations of power till I became proud, insolent, and intolerable, these considerations will make me wish to leave the regiment before next winter; that by frequenting men above myself I may know my true condition, and by discoursing with the other sex may learn some civility and mildness of carriage.  " He got leave of absence, and spent six months in Paris, where he was presented at Court and saw much of the best society.   This did not prevent him from working hard to perfect himself in French, as well as in horsemanship, fencing, dancing, and other accomplishments, and from earnestly seeking an opportunity to study the various armies of Europe.   In this he was thwarted by the stupidity and prejudice of the commander-in-chief; and he made what amends he could by extensive reading in all that bore on military matters.  

His martial instincts were balanced by strong domestic inclinations.   He was fond of children; and after his disappointment in love used to say that they were the only true inducement to marriage.   He was a most dutiful son, and wrote continually to both his parents.   Sometimes he would philosophize on the good and ill of life; sometimes he held questionings with his conscience; and once he wrote to his mother in a strain of self-accusation not to be expected from a bold and determined soldier.   His nature was a compound of tenderness and fire, which last sometimes showed itself in sharp and unpleasant flashes.   His excitable temper was capable almost of fierceness, and he could now and then be needlessly stern; but towards his father, mother, and friends he was a model of steady affection.   He made friends readily, and kept them, and was usually a pleasant companion though subject to sallies of imperious irritability which occasionally broke through his strong sense of good breeding.   For this his susceptible constitution was largely answerable, for he was a living barometer, and his spirits rose and fell with every change of weather.   In spite of his impatient outbursts, the officers whom he had commanded remained attached to him for life; and, in spite of his rigorous discipline, he was beloved by his soldiers, to whose comfort he was always attentive.   Frankness, directness, essential good feeling, and a high integrity atoned for all his faults.  

In his own view, as expressed to his mother, he was a person of very moderate abilities, aided by more than usual diligence; but this modest judgment of himself by no means deprived him of self-confidence, nor, in time of need, of self-assertion.   He delighted in every kind of hardihood; and, in his contempt for effeminacy, once said to his mother: "Better be a savage of some use than a gentle, amorous puppy, obnoxious to all the world.  " He was far from despising fame; but the controlling principles of his life were duty to his country and his profession, loyalty to the King, and fidelity to his own ideal of the perfect soldier.   To the parent who was the confidant of his most intimate thoughts he said: "All that I wish for myself is that I may at all times be ready and firm to meet that fate we cannot shun, and to die gracefully and properly when the hour comes.  " Never was wish more signally fulfilled.   Again he tells her: "My utmost desire and ambition is to look steadily upon danger;" and his desire was accomplished.   His intrepidity was complete.   No form of death had power to daunt him.   Once and again, when bound on some deadly enterprise of war, he calmly counts the chances whether or not he can compel his feeble body to bear him on till the work is done.   A frame so delicately strung could not have been insensible to danger; but forgetfulness of self, and the absorption of every faculty in the object before him, shut out the sense of fear.   He seems always to have been at his best in the thick of battle; most complete in his mastery over himself and over others.  

But it is in the intimacies of domestic life that one sees him most closely, and especially in his letters to his mother, from whom he inherited his frail constitution, without the beauty that distinguished her.   "The greatest happiness that I wish for here is to see you happy.  " "If you stay much at home I will come and shut myself up with you for three weeks or a month, and play at piquet from morning till night; and you shall laugh at my short red hair as much as you please.  " The playing at piquet was a sacrifice to filial attachment; for the mother loved cards, and the son did not.   "Don't trouble yourself about my room or my bedclothes; too much care and delicacy at this time would enervate me and complete the destruction of a tottering constitution.   Such as it is, it must serve me now, and I'll make the best of it while it holds.  " At the beginning of the war his father tried to dissuade him from offering his services on board the fleet; and he replies in a letter to Mrs.   Wolfe: "It is no time to think of what is convenient or agreeable; that service is certainly the best in which we are the most useful.   For my part, I am determined never to give myself a moment's concern about the nature of the duty which His Majesty is pleased to order us upon.   It will be a sufficient comfort to you two, as far as my person is concerned, at least it will be a reasonable consolation, to reflect that the Power which has hitherto preserved me may, if it be his pleasure, continue to do so; if not, that it is but a few days or a few years more or less, and that those who perish in their duty and in the service of their country die honorably.  " Then he proceeds to give particular directions about his numerous dogs, for the welfare of which in his absence he provides with anxious solicitude, especially for "my friend Caesar, who has great merit and much good-humor.  "

After the unfortunate expedition against Rochefort, when the board of general officers appointed to inquire into the affair were passing the highest encomiums upon his conduct, his parents were at Bath, and he took possession of their house at Blackheath, whence he wrote to his mother: "I lie in your chamber, dress in the General's little parlor, and dine where you did.   The most perceptible difference and change of affairs (exclusive of the bad table I keep) is the number of dogs in the yard; but by coaxing Ball [his father's dog] and rubbing his back with my stick, I have reconciled him with the new ones, and put them in some measure under his protection.  "

When about to sail on the expedition against Louisbourg, he was anxious for his parents, and wrote to his uncle, Major Wolfe, at Dublin: "I trust you will give the best advice to my mother, and such assistance, if it should be wanted, as the distance between you will permit.   I mention this because the General seems to decline apace, and narrowly escaped being carried off in the spring.   She, poor woman, is in a bad state of health, and needs the care of some friendly hand.   She has long and painful fits of illness, which by succession and inheritance are likely to devolve on me, since I feel the early symptoms of them.  " Of his friends Guy Carleton, afterwards Lord Dorchester, and George Warde, the companion of his boyhood, he also asks help for his mother in his absence.  

His part in the taking of Louisbourg greatly increased his reputation.   After his return he went to Bath to recruit his health; and it seems to have been here that he wooed and won Miss Katherine Lowther, daughter of an ex-Governor of Barbadoes, and sister of the future Lord Lonsdale.   A betrothal took place, and Wolfe wore her portrait till the night before his death.   It was a little before this engagement that he wrote to his friend Lieutenant-Colonel Rickson: "I have this day signified to Mr.  Pitt that he may dispose of my slight carcass as he pleases, and that I am ready for any undertaking within the compass of my skill and cunning.   I am in a very bad condition both with the gravel and rheumatism; but I had much rather die than decline any kind of service that offers.   If I followed my own taste it would lead me into Germany.   However, it is not our part to choose, but to obey.   My opinion is that I shall join the army in America.  "

Pitt chose him to command the expedition then fitting out against Quebec; made him a major-general, though, to avoid giving offence to older officers, he was to hold that rank in America alone; and permitted him to choose his own staff.   Appointments made for merit, and not through routine and patronage, shocked the Duke of Newcastle, to whom a man like Wolfe was a hopeless enigma; and he told George II.   that Pitt's new general was mad.   "Mad is he?" returned the old King; "then I hope he will bite some others of my generals.  "

At the end of January the fleet was almost ready, and Wolfe wrote to his uncle Walter: "I am to act a greater part in this business than I wished.   The backwardness of some of the older officers has in some measure forced the Government to come down so low.   I shall do my best, and leave the rest to fortune, as perforce we must when there are not the most commanding abilities.   We expect to sail in about three weeks.   A London life and little exercise disagrees entirely with me, but the sea still more.   If I have health and constitution enough for the campaign, I shall think myself a lucky man; what happens afterwards is of no great consequence.  " He sent to his mother an affectionate letter of farewell, went to Spithead, embarked with Admiral Saunders in the ship "Neptune," and set sail on the seventeenth of February.   In a few hours the whole squadron was at sea, the transports, the frigates, and the great line-of-battle ships, with their ponderous armament and their freight of rude humanity armed and trained for destruction; while on the heaving deck of the "Neptune," wretched with sea-sickness and racked with pain, stood the gallant invalid who was master of it all.  

The fleet consisted of twenty-two ships of the line, with frigates, sloops-of-war, and a great number of transports.   When Admiral Saunders arrived with his squadron off Louisbourg, he found the entrance blocked by ice, and was forced to seek harborage at Halifax.   The squadron of Admiral Holmes, which had sailed a few days earlier, proceeded to New York to take on board troops destined for the expedition, while the squadron of Admiral Durell steered for the St.   Lawrence to intercept the expected ships from France.   In May the whole fleet, except the ten ships with Durell, was united in the harbor of Louisbourg.   Twelve thousand troops were to have been employed for the expedition; but several regiments expected from the West Indies were for some reason countermanded, while the accessions from New York and the Nova Scotia garrisons fell far short of the looked-for numbers.   Three weeks before leaving Louisbourg, Wolfe writes to his uncle Walter that he has an army of nine thousand men.   The actual number seems to have been somewhat less.   "Our troops are good," he informs Pitt; "and if valor can make amends for the want of numbers, we shall probably succeed.  "

Three brigadiers, all in the early prime of life, held command under him: Monckton, Townshend, and Murray.   They were all his superiors in birth, and one of them, Townshend, never forgot that he was so.   "George Townshend," says Walpole, "has thrust himself again into the service; and, as far as wrongheadedness will go, is very proper for a hero.  ” The same caustic writer says further that he was of "a proud, sullen, and contemptuous temper," and that he "saw everything in an ill-natured and ridiculous light.  ” Though his perverse and envious disposition made him a difficult colleague, Townshend had both talents and energy; as also had Monckton, the same officer who commanded at the capture of Beauséjour in 1755.   Murray, too, was well matched to the work in hand, in spite of some lingering remains of youthful rashness.  

On the sixth of June the last ship of the fleet sailed out of Louisbourg harbor, the troops cheering and the officers drinking to the toast, "British colors on every French fort, port, and garrison in America.  " The ships that had gone before lay to till the whole fleet was reunited, and then all steered together for the St.   Lawrence.   From the headland of Cape Egmont, the Micmac hunter, gazing far out over the shimmering sea, saw the horizon flecked with their canvas wings, as they bore northward on their errand of havoc.  

NOTE: For the material of the foregoing sketch of Wolfe I am indebted to Wright's excellent Life of him and the numerous letters contained in it.   Several autograph letters which have escaped the notice of Mr.  Wright are preserved in the Public Record Office.   The following is a characteristic passage from one of these, written on board the "Neptune," at sea, on the sixth of June, the day when the fleet sailed from Louisbourg.   It is directed to a nobleman of high rank in the army, whose name does not appear, the address being lost (War Office Records: North America, various, 1756-1763): "I have had the honour to receive two letters from your Lordship, one of an old date, concerning my stay in this country [after the capture of Louisbourg,] in answer to which I shall only say that the Marshal told me I was to return at the end of the campaign; and as General Amherst had no other commands than to send me to winter at Halifax under the orders of an officer [Brigadier Lawrence] who was but a few months before put over my head, I thought it was much better to get into the way of service and out of the way of being insulted; and as the style of your Lordship's letter is pretty strong, I must take the liberty to inform you that … rather than receive orders in the Government [of Nova Scotia] from an officer younger than myself (though a very worthy man), I should certainly have desired leave to resign my commission; for as I neither ask nor expect any favour, so I never intend to submit to any ill-usage whatsoever.  "

Many other papers in the Public Record Office have been consulted in preparing the above chapter, including the secret instructions of the King to Wolfe and to Saunders, and the letters of Amherst to Wolfe and to Pitt.   Other correspondence touching the same subjects is printed in Selections from the Public Documents of Nova Scotia, 441-450.   Knox, Mante, and Entick are the best contemporary printed sources.  

A story has gained currency respecting the last interview of Wolfe with Pitt, in which he is said to have flourished his sword and boasted of what he would achieve.   This anecdote was told by Lord Temple, who was present at the interview, to Mr.  Grenville, who, many years after, told it to Earl Stanhope, by whom it was made public.   That the incident underwent essential changes in the course of these transmissions, which extended over more than half a century, for Earl Stanhope was not born till 1805, can never be doubted by one who considers the known character of Wolfe, who may have uttered some vehement expression, but who can never be suspected of gasconade.